A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
If you’re raising kids today, it can be easy to focus on the negative. And it’s no wonder: Thanks to the 24-hour news cycle, social media, cell phone notifications — and even sources you wouldn’t expect, like Instagram and YouTube — kids are immersed in doom and gloom. Consider their world: The suicide rate is up, cyberbullying is rampant, the [...]
Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.Source: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? - The Atlantic
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children and teens should be "physically active for at least 60 minutes per day," although they stress that it doesn't have to be 60 minutes of continuous activity. As most parents know, along with a healthy diet, regular exercise is the best way to lose weight and prevent childhood obesity. Regular exercise [...]
Too much exposure, especially in boys, may stunt social development. Brains at every age, especially developing ones, adapt to the environment in which they find themselves. What worries a growing number of advocates are the potential risks of heavy screen exposure, including, they believe, the hastening of autism in the young and attention deficit–hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in older children. Dangers [...]
Neurons Recap Useful Firing Patterns During Deep Sleep The benefits of a good night’s sleep have become widely known, and now neuroscientists at UC San Francisco have discovered that the animal brain reinforces motor skills during deep sleep. During non-REM sleep, slow brain waves bolster neural touchpoints that are directly related to a task that [...]
As a school counselor, one of the most frequently asked category of questions I receive centers around ‘how do I handle my child’s anger?’ The question is almost always spoken by parents in a voice burdened with shame and embarrassment—as if anger in childhoodwas a bad thing or that any ‘good’ parent would know how to keep their kids perpetually [...]
At any given time, you’ll find four or more parenting books on my Amazon wish list, a few by my nightstand, and an email inbox chock full of insightful parenting theories and approaches. Granted, child development is my career, but I speak with plenty of parents in my practice who find themselves in similar circumstances. [...]
Problem gambling is a significant societal concern that is set to get bigger. Game and gambling operators are chasing the proliferation of new technologies readily accessible via your phone or tablet. This is breaking through traditional barriers to advertising, leaving the switched-on generation in the firing line. Gambling operators may feel they have hit the [...]
Baby Clementine was burning with fever, coughing and sleeping almost around the clock. Her parents, Emily Ritchie and Lachlan Barnes, had no idea their 15-month-old had fallen ill with the flu. Like more than two-thirds of Australian parents, they hadn't immunised their daughter against the potentially deadly virus. The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne has seen an alarming [...]
FOUR in 10 Australian secondary students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are failing minimum literacy or numeracy standards, worrying new research has revealed. The Australian-first study by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute found almost three-quarters of Year 7 students with ADHD had problems with writing. More than half of Year 9 students with the disorder [...]
